Starbear

After several hotel stays, I've found that points from both Hilton & Novotel stays just never appear in my account. My account in the HH site says that 20 a'points have been sent to NZ, from a stay in the USA back at beginning Feb., but sofar nothing. Meantime, I have never had a Novotel stay in Aust./NZ actually make it with the points.

Aside form the flying, the hotels are the only decent earner of points, car rentals being very low at NZ$2.50 a day , which then gets converted to Aussie Airpoints.

Anyone got any advice?
Cheers.

ajnz

HHonors has an exactly 50% success ratio for me.
Novotel/Mercure has never posted automatically.
Sheraton has never posted automatically and I'm still chasing a credit from October 07.
Langham posted unreliably, but lately my corporate rate prohibits A$ earning anyway.

About the only hotels reliable for posting is Priority Club.

Xiaotung

I had to write to both Airpoints and the relevant hotels every time after a stay at Starwood, Accor, & MCK hotels last year to chase up points. This is 10 out of 10 times. Points just never got loaded automatically. This has now happened to my Conrad and Hilton stays too this year. I still have 3 Le Meridien stays and 2 Hilton stays yet to be credited. The only hotel chain that credits properly is InterContinental.

The story with Le Meridien is they are still seeking some accrual code from Starwood. Apparently this code has never been set up when Le Meridien was integrated into Starwood group a few years ago (ie, no one has ever successfully claimed Airpoints at Le Meridien, I think). Shocking but true. Airpoints credit admins are having their hands full at the moment with crediting all the missing points manually.

I suggest you email the hotels directly and forward their reply to Airpoints. Ideally to the dedicated Gold or Silver mailbox if you have status.

Kiwi Flyer

Thanks for reminding me to check. I have a Hilton stay credit to chase up. The other 3 recent stays all posted okay.

Starbear

Thanks to all ... at least I now know that this is "ops normal". So, I'll direct the HH & Accor stays will go to Miles and More (or even QF) in future.
Cheers

lokijuh

I have 50% success rate on Hilton stays crediting automatically. Unsurprisingly one thing I noticed is that individual hotels seem to have problems (my US visit in Oct 07 was a near replica of same visit in Oct 06 - the Hiltons that didn't post in 06 didn't post in 07, the ones that did, did.

Gazza

Sorry to hijack the thread but what program gives the best return when crediting to ANZ Airpoints?

Normally stay at CP or Intercon level properties

Thanks
Gaz

jswong

In general I find it better to credit Hotel stays to the relevant Hotel program

Did have a stay a while back at a Novotel which never posted

Langham stays only post about 1/3 of the time (and often not to my registered preferred program). Did have one shocker when on a Langham stay they listed me as having earnt 2000 airpoints for the stay Not surprisingly that didn't stick

Since most Hotel stays credit at a flat rate to NZ the best deals are with the cheapest Hotel rates

Jeff

Xiaotung

Definitely stays Westin/Sheraton/Four Points in AU/NZ which earn at 40 Airbucks per stay. But that will never post unless you keep calling them.

Zaco

Strange. 100% of my Hilton stays post to Airpoints, usually within a couple of days (this on 25+ stays last year). The only problem I've had is getting bonus points to post for the recent double points/double miles promo, but a few emails to Airpoints and this was sorted too.

FWIW my Airpoints number is saved in my HHonors account with the leading 0's (so 0079xxxx - old six digit airpoints number), I don't show my NZ card at check-in and most of my stays are in Europe. Other than that I can't guess why I'm the lucky one!

In terms of best program (for earning outside Oz/NZ), I find Hilton best for Airpoints but obviously depends on your travel patterns. "Double Dipping" (I hate that term) is also great and 10,000 Hhonors points convert to 20 Airbucks if you don't want to build up points.

Also, a quick tip for maximizing Airbucks with Hilton: if you're going to spend over US$500 choose Points + Variable Miles, if under US$500 then choose Points + Fixed Miles (I lost close to 500 Airbucks last year as I didn't calculate this until December).

Cheers, Zac

Kiwi Flyer

This can be affected by promotions. There's a calculator in the Hilton HHonors forum for working out the best MyWay options.

serfty

I have had two stays at USA Hiltons in the last few weeks, none of which have posted the 20AP's.

The activity on HHionors shows as :

"NZ DOUBLE DIP - Hilton Ontario Airport 0 20 "

But nothing has appeared on my AP account as yet. (My profile has my airpoints number as 7 digits, no leading zero.)

If it does post automatically, long should this take? Other than that how best to chase it up?

Kiwi Flyer

Hotel points typically take 4-8 weeks to credit. Give it some more time.

cavemanzk

What about for dutyfree?

Xiaotung

DFS? That credits by the next day even weekends.